Most older people want to stay at home as long as they can. When this is no longer possible, they move into residential aged care facilities, which become their home. But Australia’s care facilities for the aged are growing in size and becoming less home-like.

Today, more than 200,000 Australians live or stay in residential aged care on any given day. There are around 2,672 such facilities in Australia. This equates to an average of around 75 beds per facility.

Large institutions for people with disability and mental illness, as well as orphaned children, were once commonplace. But now – influenced by the 1960s deinstitutionalisation movement – these have been closed down and replaced with smaller community-based services. In the case of aged care, Australia has gone the opposite way.

Why is smaller better?

Evidence shows that aged care residents have better well-being when given opportunities for self-determination and independence. Internationally, there has been a move towards smaller living units where the design encourages this. These facilities feel more like a home than a hospital.

The World Health Organisation has indicated that such models of care, where residents are also involved in running the facility, have advantages for older people, families, volunteers and care workers, and improve the quality of care.

Older people have a better quality of life if they can be involved in outdoor activities.from shutterstock.com

Around 50% of residents living in aged care facilities have dementia. And research has shown that a higher quality of life for those with dementia is associated with buildings that help them engage with a variety of activities both inside and outside, are familiar, provide a variety of private and community spaces and the amenities and opportunities to take part in domestic activities.

In June 2018, an Australian study found residents with dementia in aged-care facilities that provided a home-like model of care had far better quality of life and fewer hospitalisations than those in more standard facilities. The home-like facilities had up to 15 residents.

The study also found the cost of caring for older people in the smaller facilities was no higher, and in some cases lower, than in institutionalised facilities.

There are some moves in Australia towards smaller aged care services. For example, aged care provider Wintringham has developed services with smaller facilities for older people who are homeless. Wintringham received the Building and Social Housing Foundation World Habitat Award 1997 for Wintringham Port Melbourne Hostel. Its innovative design actively worked against the institutional model.

Bigger and less home-like

Historically, nursing homes in Australia were small facilities, with around 30 beds each, often run as family businesses or provided by not-for-profit organisations. Between 2002 and 2013 the proportion of facilities with more than 60 beds doubled to 48.6%. Financial viability rather than quality of care drove the increase in size.

Today, around 45% of facilities are operated by the private for-profit sector, 40% by religious and charitable organisations, 13% by community-based organisations, 3% by state and territory governments, and less than 1% by local governments.

In 2016, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) reported that residential care services run by government organisations were more likely to be in small facilities. One-fifth (22%) of places in these facilities are in services with 20 or fewer places. Almost half (49%) of privately-run residential places are found in services with more than 100 places.

All of this means that more older Australians are living out their last days in an institutional environment.

Once larger facilities become the norm, it will be difficult to undo. Capital infrastructure is built to have an average 40-year life, which will lock in the institutional model of aged care.

The built environment matters. The royal commission provides an opportunity to fundamentally critique the institutional model.

How can design improve the lives of people with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia?

You are stuck in a busy, noisy, unfamiliar building. You are unsure of where you are or even what time of year it is. All the corridors look the same. You find it hard to judge how far away the floor is. You can’t remember where the toilets are. You can’t remember why you’re here. You feel a rising sense of panic as you search for clues to where you are, and even who you are.

As the world’s population expands and the proportion of older people grows, the needs of elderly patients are increasingly relevant to healthcare design. It is estimated that one in four people in UK hospital beds have dementia, and the number of people with dementia is expected to double over the next 30 years.

The King’s Fund, an independent charity working to improve health and healthcare in England, was funded by the Department of Health to carry out a special project looking at how the design of hospitals, outpatient services and care homes could be improved to make life better for people with dementia. This Enhancing the Healing Environment programme was the first systematic look at this topic in the UK, and has resulted in materials and resources which are now being used globally. As well as guidelines for what makes a service dementia-friendly, there is a tool for assessing how dementia-friendly a service is.

What do places that use these principles look like in real life? Age-related changes to vision mean that older people often find it harder to see contrasts and to perceive depth. If flooring changes colour between rooms this can seem like a step and be confusing. If carpets have bold, swirling patterns these can seem like obstacles or holes, which makes moving slow and difficult and can lead to falls. Dementia-friendly wards have matt, even-coloured flooring and clear sightlines through corridors.

The most helpful designs use clear contrasts in colour to mark spaces that have different uses, particularly to flag where toilets are. The toilets themselves have contrasting toilet seats and rails so the person can see where to sit.

Sarah Waller of the King’s Fund notes how innovations that might make some people’s lives easier can actually make things more confusing for people with dementia: “Odd-looking taps are difficult to understand. Sensor taps are almost impossible.”

Features similar to those seen in evidence-based hospital design are also important, including increased light, less noise and use of natural scenes. Increased opportunities for social space, and memorabilia and artworks that prompt memory, can also help. Increased access to staff, for example by using a cluster model of nursing rather than enclosed nursing stations, helps to reassure patients.

The results have shown how crucial good design can be. Changes like these have led to “fewer falls, less violence and aggressive behaviour, and less staff sickness,” says Waller. “Actually we’re making the environment friendly for everybody,” she adds. “Good dementia design is good for everybody.”

You are stuck in a busy, noisy, unfamiliar building. You are unsure of where you are or even what time of year it is. All the corridors look the same. You find it hard to judge how far away the floor is. You can’t remember where the toilets are. You can’t remember why you’re here. You feel a rising sense of panic as you search for clues to where you are, and even who you are.

As the world’s population expands and the proportion of older people grows, the needs of elderly patients are increasingly relevant to healthcare design. It is estimated that one in four people in UK hospital beds have dementia, and the number of people with dementia is expected to double over the next 30 years.

The King’s Fund, an independent charity working to improve health and healthcare in England, was funded by the Department of Health to carry out a special project looking at how the design of hospitals, outpatient services and care homes could be improved to make life better for people with dementia. This Enhancing the Healing Environment programme was the first systematic look at this topic in the UK, and has resulted in materials and resources which are now being used globally. As well as guidelines for what makes a service dementia-friendly, there is a tool for assessing how dementia-friendly a service is.

What do places that use these principles look like in real life? Age-related changes to vision mean that older people often find it harder to see contrasts and to perceive depth. If flooring changes colour between rooms this can seem like a step and be confusing. If carpets have bold, swirling patterns these can seem like obstacles or holes, which makes moving slow and difficult and can lead to falls. Dementia-friendly wards have matt, even-coloured flooring and clear sightlines through corridors.

The most helpful designs use clear contrasts in colour to mark spaces that have different uses, particularly to flag where toilets are. The toilets themselves have contrasting toilet seats and rails so the person can see where to sit.

Sarah Waller of the King’s Fund notes how innovations that might make some people’s lives easier can actually make things more confusing for people with dementia: “Odd-looking taps are difficult to understand. Sensor taps are almost impossible.”

Features similar to those seen in evidence-based hospital design are also important, including increased light, less noise and use of natural scenes. Increased opportunities for social space, and memorabilia and artworks that prompt memory, can also help. Increased access to staff, for example by using a cluster model of nursing rather than enclosed nursing stations, helps to reassure patients.

The results have shown how crucial good design can be. Changes like these have led to “fewer falls, less violence and aggressive behaviour, and less staff sickness,” says Waller. “Actually we’re making the environment friendly for everybody,” she adds. “Good dementia design is good for everybody.”

Everyone knows how bad it feels when the temperature is uncomfortably hot or cold. For most of us it doesn’t last long as we can take simple steps to get comfortable, such as putting on clothes, opening a window, or switching on a heater.

But what happens when you can’t control the temperature where you live? This problem is faced by many residents of aged care facilities, and can be particularly difficult for those living with dementia. To find out how these residents cope we recently carried out a three-year research project on the effects of indoor environment in aged care facilities in south-eastern NSW. This was part of a broader program of University of Wollongong research on the impact of indoor environment on elderly people.

Dementia and agitation

Dementia is a collection of symptoms that affect people’s behaviour, thinking, and their ability to communicate and perform everyday tasks. Sometimes people with dementia can become agitated or distressed, which can be disturbing for other people around them. This often happens for no clear reason.

This is a big issue for the aged care sector since approximately half of all residents in aged care facilities have dementia.

Dr Federico Tartarini (right) led the study that found that indoor temperatures in aged care centres have a dramatic impact on the wellbeing of residents, particularly those living with dementia. Photo: University of Wollongong.Author supplied, CC BY

Tracking the temperature

Firstly we set up a network of sensors in six aged care facilities to monitor indoor environmental conditions, such as air temperature, humidity, air velocity and noise.

In collaboration with the care staff of one particular facility we then assessed the frequency and intensity of a range of agitated behaviours exhibited by residents living with dementia over the course of a year.

The most important finding of this study was that the frequency and intensity of agitated behaviours of residents with dementia significantly increased when they were exposed to uncomfortable air temperatures.

A statistically significant correlation was found between rates of agitation of residents and their cumulative exposure to temperatures outside their comfort zone of between 20°C and 26°C.

More generally, the data collected from the hundreds of temperature sensors across all our case study facilities over a one-year period showed that some facilities were often uncomfortably hot or cold (below 19°C in winter and over 30°C in summer) for significant periods.

Poorly designed buildings

This was attributable to many different factors including poor thermal design of the buildings and poor control of the heating and cooling systems. Interestingly, our analysis showed staff were significantly less tolerant of variations in indoor temperature than residents, probably because they were generally more active than the residents (i.e. moving around and working), and therefore had higher metabolic rates. They may have also had higher thermal comfort expectations than the residents.

Regulations can help

The evidence appears to suggest that maintaining a comfortable temperature
will reduce the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.

There is a clear need for new regulations that ensure aged care facilities provide comfortable indoor environmental conditions, particularly for elderly residents, but also for the staff working in these facilities.

The aged care sector needs good indoor environmental rating tools, built on recent research evidence, to guide the design of their facilities and to audit their operations.

This type of approach has already been successfully applied in the commercial building sector, where mandatory disclosure of the real energy consumption of larger offices, for example, is required of owners wishing to sell or lease their property.

Publicly available ratings of the actual indoor environment provided to aged care residents and staff would alert architects, managers and staff to the importance of thermal comfort and help elderly people, and their families, make a more informed choice as to the best facility in which to live.

Many of us pay close attention to how our taxes are spent, and how well governments invest in infrastructure projects such as roads, schools and hospitals. Value for money is key. Yet horror stories of waste, lateness and poor quality are common.

To develop and finance public services and infrastructure, governments around the world (but especially in Europe) have become increasingly keen on private sector involvement. These cross-sector collaborations can help provide value for money for taxpayers – but they are also at risk of wasting it.

In health care, collaborations between public and private partners have a direct impact on society. This is why it is important for health care professionals like doctors and nurses to talk directly to the designers and builders of a new hospital. It ensures that these projects not only deliver economic value for the private companies building the hospital – but also social value for the doctors, nurses and patients who will use the hospital for decades to come.

For instance, in one recently built British hospital, medical staff were able to bring valuable insight to the design process. A visit by some of the hospital’s senior nurses to a children’s hospital in the US led to the replication of a lighting design on the ceiling of a children’s ward so that it mimicked a starry night sky. As one of the nurses explained to me afterwards:

It might sound like a small change, but it provides a much more homely surrounding than the normal NHS lighting. This is important for our young patients [providing a] less scary, hospital experience which positively impacts on the healing process. […] It creates a much nicer environment in which our little patients can recover.

In another hospital, input from senior nurses helped to establish a ward design that most suited their professional needs – right down to the placement of plumbing. This saved large amounts of money that might have been spent on undoing unnecessary building work had the nurses not been consulted.

As one project manager of the construction company told me: “Thanks to [the senior nurses’] input and telling us how they intend to use wards, we changed the ward layout, such as the position of sinks. This may seem to be a minor issue, but may have a huge impact when caring for a patient.”

To see how social value can be best achieved through cross-sector collaborations we looked into the key building blocks that go beyond a mere focus on contracts.

An organisations’ prior experience of cross sector collaboration and a supportive climate is vital in creating social value. It also helps to have had some exposure to previous projects (good and bad). But a major ingredient is the individual employees in both public and private sector organisations.

Building mutual knowledge and aligning goals between doctors, nurses and design and construction professionals is key, as public and private sector employees often have different objectives for projects (making a profit vs healing patients). A shared understanding can come through listening to and appreciating the other parties’ professional language and the expertise that language expresses.

Joint expertise

Beyond an understanding of the other parties’ expertise, practical matters of shared goals and jointly developed timelines are necessary. Coordinating efforts between the two sectors needs to take priority at the outset – rather than emphasising project speed and completion.

To encourage these positive outcomes, the key people need to meet frequently to exchange information, address problems and discuss plans. Without this kind of coordination and collaboration, it will be impossible to make the most of both sides’ specialist knowledge.

So when it comes to hospitals and clinics, the private company needs to actively seek the involvement of doctors and nurses in the design and construction phases. Similarly, doctors and nurses should not be threatened by private companies, but instead seek to become actively engaged. This will help drive creative design innovations such as the “night sky” ceiling in the children’s ward.

It takes time and resources, but this kind of collaboration and coordination between public and private sectors provides an opportunity to increase value – both economic and social. And that’s something that not only benefits construction companies and health care professionals – but patients and taxpayers, too.

We are told that we are a nation of couch potatoes, lacking the will and the strength to turn around the obesity tanker. We all need a little help in our quest for a healthier life and design can play a crucial part. If we designed our towns, cities, homes and workplaces more like animal experts design zoos, we could be one step nearer to reaching our fitness goals – as long as we can have some fun along the way.

It is reported that British people will be the fattest in Europe by 2025 and that if we want to reverse this we should have a healthier lifestyle by exercising more and eating less. But we are often made to feel guilty for not sticking to theses healthy lifestyle plans. I would suggest that before we start blaming people for adopting sedentary lifestyles, we should be taking a step back to look at the design of the environments, towns and cities in which we live.

The link between the design of the built and natural environment and its role in our health and well-being has been well explored. Now new research, led by Lancaster University, on “design for health” suggests that the environment, including buildings, cities, urban spaces and transport infrastructure, is closely linked to the lifestyles we adopt.

What is abundantly clear is that, as we shape our environment, it is also shaping us. Our psychological, physiological and physical status as well as our interactions with other people and with the natural environment are all affected. A key challenge that governments and policy makers worldwide are facing is how our built environment and infrastructure should be shaped to support healthier behaviours to prevent disease.

First, we should stop focusing on methods that tell people what to (or not to) do and which attempt to change their behaviour simply through media campaigns and punitive measures, such as tax schemes. While seeking to minimise the barriers that prevent healthy behaviours, we should make sure that the design of new environments is taken into account.

Looking to zoos

A good model would be to look at how zoos are designed. Before a zoo is built, it is common practice for zoologists, biologists, animal psychologists, nutritionists, architects, designers and landscape architects to work closely together to create an environment that optimises the living conditions for the animals.

Important environmental elements, such as vegetation, habitat, lighting, materials and each animal’s requirements are taken into account. The ultimate aim is to design an environment that fully supports the animals’ physical, psychological and social well-being. Ironically, we do not seem to make the same demands when a town, neighbourhood or workplace environment for humans is planned and designed.

Another opportunity that has recently emerged is the healthy new town NHS initiative. The aim is to radically rethink how we live and take an ambitious look at improving health through the built environment. Ten demonstrator towns will be built across England with community health and well-being as their main focus. Clinicians, designers and technology experts will reimagine how healthcare can be delivered in these places. Although this is a step in the right direction, what it is currently missing is the more holistic approach we have seen in the design of the zoos.

A crucial element in designing these towns so they are places that people would want to live in, is to include community members in their creation. This strategy would help design-in health-promoting behaviours, such as access to healthy food outlets or green spaces in which people can walk and exercise.

Embracing playfulness

Playful design – the mapping of playful experiences from games and toys to other non-game contexts – can play an important role here in inviting and encouraging people towards healthier alternatives. For example, the piano stairs project in Stockholm, which converts the metro stairs into a giant functioning piano keyboard – much like the piano made famous in the Tom Hanks movie Big (1988) – demonstrates great promise. It encourages commuters to opt for the intriguing new stairway instead of the escalators to enjoy making musical movements as they go up and down.

A project in The Netherlands, meanwhile, illustrates how everyday street furniture, such as lampposts, benches and bollards, can be inexpensively converted into impromptu exercise devices, inviting people to engage in casual activity and socialise with their neighbours. We could therefore envisage several other contexts were playfulness can transform mundane everyday activities into fun ones that encourage people into a more active and social lifestyle.

We could convert building walls into activity walls to encourage stretching of arms and legs through touch; redesign public squares and walkways into interactive dance floors that invite movement and guide you through a city; and transform workplace spaces and public places into “playgrounds” that boost movement and productivity and decrease lethargy.

So there you have it. If we want to be a nation of lean, mean and healthy citizens we need to learn from zoos and the animals that live in them. And we need to embrace playfulness and enjoy the place where we live. That way, we can tackle life with a hop, skip and a jump.

Building a dignified system where Singaporeans can choose how we want to live and how we want to say goodbye

The loss of freedom, dignity and respect in places with 11 to 25 bedded wards, lacking in privacy, with staff being paid SGD$350 a month without food and accommodation were reported in a Channel NewsAsia program known as Talking Point. In addition, it was also mentioned by author and research Ms Radha Basu one staff member can be observed responsible for 20 to 32 residents in the night, and residents live with bare necessities such as a toothbrush, bed and a cabinet. The lifestyle was found to be highly regimented with the journalist sharing that there are were only 2 options for times for showers at 6 am or 7 am. “it was like a hospital for the rest of your life” stated television host Anita Kapoor. She also states that “it’s not a criticism of the facilities themselves, it’s a criticism of the system. You cannot approach eldercare the way you approach hospital visits. It can’t just be a means to an end need. It is a life. You have to think in terms of life and end of life.”

I was really exhausted by the environment

– television host, Anita Kapoor, 45 years of age.

I applaud Ms Kapoor for taking a stand and putting herself in the resident’s place, experiencing the environment literally for a fortnight first hand, living as residents lived.

Like my previous article about Singapore nursing homes, our story of the wooden bowl? I questioned how we want to care for our older adults, our parents, our grandparents, given the state of the nursing homes in Singapore. How do we care for our loved ones in Singapore with dementia without dementia enabling built environments?

My thoughts have constantly been being echoed in this programme. Pushing for better environments for people with dementia. I dare to say that I can dream for a day when Singapore will be able to have facilities that advocate for independence, dignity and respect for residents. Seeing an assisted living facility in the heart of Bukit Timah, it’s heartwarming and inspiring to see the St Bernadette Lifestyle village, assisted living facility that is just like a home.

In the meantime, I will keep working on a dementia enabling environmental audit tool for Singapore in the hope that we will be able to create dementia enabling long-term care facilities that Singaporeans can call home.